


Remember the Starfish

by EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bullying (middle chapters), Cersei Lannister being herself, Cersei/Jaime in chapter 3/4, Childhood, Childhood Trauma, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Intimacy, JB Week 2019, Jaime/Brienne Appreciation Week, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Tormund Giantsbane/Brienne of Tarth, Prompt per day, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting, soft jaime, starts as kid fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-08 18:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12
Summary: Brienne walks the beach behind her home every day she can, scouring the beach for shells to decorate the windows of the house she and her father share. It's one day, while a storm threatens to break over the water that she finds a crying boy in the dunes and perhaps more than one thing that needs saving....JB Week: Complete!





	1. Day 1: Spring, New Beginnings, Crazy Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, folks! Happy JB Week! 
> 
> My plan is to post a new chapter in this same universe each day with the new prompt for that day. It will also be an age progression, with this chapter having them as little kids, but that will definitely change as we move forward. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think!

It wasn’t often that her father let her walk along the beach by herself, only during the daytime and when he was certain there were no storms. And no swimming by herself. Only walking and collecting the thin razor clams and other shells that were swept onto the coastal shelf by the swells that caused all of the breezes. But the days that she was allowed were her very favorite. She liked the sand and how it crunched between her toes. She liked to watch for the Ghost Crabs that dug their burrows and hatched all of their tiny pale babies in the dune behind their house. She liked to bring back one perfect shell every time she went out to put in the back windowsill where the sunsets made them shine like pearlescent rainbows until her father moved all of them to another jar and she could start again.

That was how she found him. He happened to be sitting right where he shouldn’t be behind the safety barriers and also consequently the same place that she always knew was best to find shells since no one else thought to look. She had frowned at first, and wanted to be mad at him, but when she got closer, she realized he was crying.

“Hi,” She said, and he looked up at her from where he had his head pressed into his arms across his knees that were pulled to his chest. He looked at her for a long time, and she wondered for a minute if he could talk.

“Hi,” He said softly, wiped his eyes even though new tears were right behind them. “What do you want?” She stepped back at the sharpness in his voice.

“Do you want to come out here?” She asked, looking around to see if any of the beach patrol people might be coming, though it seemed that the coast was clear for the moment. He shook his head and she deliberated a moment before sitting in the sand in front of the barrier, the rope blowing in the breeze between them. “I’m Brienne.”

“My name’s Jaime,” He said and sat up a little straighter.

“How come you’re out here?” She asked and watched as a crab crawled out of its burrow and over Jaime’s shoe, unbothered. He must have been there for a long time for it to be willing to do that. He shrugged and looked away again. “It’s okay,” She said, “I won’t tell anybody.”

“Why are you out here?” He shot back, and Brienne thought that if he had been in her first grade class last year, he would have gotten in trouble for his ‘tone’. Her hair blew around her face, promising a storm soon; she didn’t want to leave him here, but if it started raining before she got back, she’d be in big trouble. Storms made her daddy nervous after what happened with Galladon, and she had pinky promised that she would never be out like this in the rain.

“My daddy said I could come out here since it’s not raining yet,” They both looked up at the sky, thick clouds forming in great gray puffs over their heads. “I’m looking for a seashell.”

“Seashells?” He said, and scrunched his nose like he had smelled something bad. Brienne wanted to laugh: This boy was just a little silly, but he seemed upset so she didn’t want to say that to him just yet. “How come?”

“I like to put them in the window,” She explained, and he narrowed his eyes even more. She liked his eyes, they were the same color green as the Spanish moss that hung trees in front of their house and that the birds on top of their house liked to use to line their nests. “When the sun goes down it makes them look like rainbows.”

“Where do you get them?”

“All over!” He had stopped crying, and that gave her an idea. “You want to help me look?”

He hesitated, but then nodded his head. She stood quickly, reaching out a hand to help him up.

She led them on her search and realized quickly that once this boy started talking, he didn’t really stop talking. He reminded Brienne of Margaery, her friend who sat next to her and whom she shared their tabletop crayon box. He talked about the crabs that were coming out in full force to find food before the storm. And he talked about his sister- Brienne didn’t say anything about her, but she did not sound all that nice, despite what Jaime seemed to think. He talked about his shoes which his father had apparently custom ordered even though to Brienne they looked like perfectly regular shoes. Brienne did not like usually to talk very much, and it was nice to be able to focus on finding shells while Jaime’s chattering seemed to at least be improving his mood.

“There!” She said finally, as he finished a story about how he had a toy set of knights and kings and had wanted the princess to go with them but his father had insisted they not get it. To Brienne, that sounded rather silly, but again she kept her opinion to herself. Her father always told her that if she didn’t have something nice to say, maybe she shouldn’t say it at all, and it had seemed like good advice.

He followed her to where a bit of dune was littered with everything from razor clams to a nautilus that still had its inhabitant trying to make his way back to the water. “What’s that?” Jaime pointed at a shape that Brienne hadn’t noticed, a thick heavy starfish that seemed to be barely moving.

“It’s a starfish!” She exclaimed, and he blinked up at her in surprise. “He’s not supposed to be out of the water.”

“I’ve never seen a starfish,” Jaime said thoughtfully and crouched down to where his face was close to it.

“They have lots at the aquarium,” Brienne said helpfully, but he just frowned. “Have you ever been to the aquarium?”

He shook his head, and Brienne took a quick look to make sure he was the only starfish around. She opened her mouth to tell him they should put it back in the water when he spoke. “Is it dead?” She crouched down next to him and saw that he was crying again, wiping the tears off with the underside of his sleeve.

“No,” She said quickly, “But we should get it back in the water.”

He sniffed and nodded, and reached down for the fish. He picked it up so delicately Brienne thought he might drop it by accident, but he held it close to his chest, keeping his eyes on it. She walked with him, all the way to the edge of the water and waited as he waded in, almost up to his knees as the tide pushed in the sea kept churning with the growing waves. She couldn’t hear him, but knew he was speaking softly to the starfish as he set it in the water with the same softness he carried it.

“Do you think that made a difference?” Jaime came back to stand beside her, looking to where the starfish had tumbled out to sea.

“It did to that one,” Brienne said, with such certainty that Jaime half smiled at her. She liked his smile, she thought that it maybe just a little bit reminded her of sunshine. “I better go back home,” She added, “It’s going to rain and I promised I would be home.”

“Oh, okay,” He said, and his smile went away. “I’m sorry we didn’t find you a shell.”

Brienne stuck out her hand, pinched between two fingers a perfect pale purple clam shell, barely even dusted with grains of sand. “Here,” She said, “For your window.”

This time his smile was full as he took the shell in his hand and marveled over the ridged textures and smooth curve around the outside. “It’s awesome!” She exclaimed and she felt herself blushing as she smiled proudly.

“Thanks,” He said, quieter.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re really nice,” He said. “I think you might be the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

He looked up at her, and even though he wasn’t crying anymore, in that moment this boy Jaime seemed like the saddest person in the whole wide world. “I’m not,” Brienne knew plenty of nice people. Her teacher. Her father. Margaery. Renly. Sansa.

But Jaime shook his head, “You are!” He insisted. “I was out here cause.cause my mommy died two days ago.” He sniffed really big again, but he didn’t look away from her, as if daring her to comment on him crying. “My father and Cersei don’t even seem sad, and they’re mean to Tyrion…”

“Who’s Tyrion?”

“My new brother,” Jaime explained, “My father keeps saying he killed my mommy but he’s just a baby. And I know he didn’t do it, but Cersei keeps saying that he did. And no one will talk about mommy and I want to hold Tyrion but Cersei told me it wasn’t safe...”

Brienne felt herself panicking. Jaime was doing much as he had earlier and was rambling as he got more and more emotional. But she felt the first drop of rain on her head, and knew they couldn’t stay out here forever.

“Jaime.” She said and he stuttered, stopping talking and looking at her, grasping tight to his seashell.

She didn’t know what to say, so she stepped a little closer and pulled him into a hug. Normally, she was much taller than the other kids, but she and Jaime were almost exactly the same height, so hugging him was easy. He didn’t do anything at first, but then he hugged her back, and she could feel the shell closed in his fist against her back.

“I gotta go home,” She said pulling back with a small wave and starting to run as the rain started to come down just a little harder. He nodded, and she only looked back once after she made it to the back porch of her house. He was still standing there, waving his hand that held the shell at her even though the rain was pouring down now and everything around him had turned dark gray.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, folks! 
> 
> Thanks to the folks who commented and kudosed the last chapter, I'm so glad that you all enjoyed it! 
> 
> We're on to day 2! A little older, a little bolder maybe. 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy, please R and R, let me know what you think!

“Isn’t it too hot to be on the beach and not in the water?” Jaime half-ran up to her, abandoning Addam Marbrand and the two-on-two volleyball game they had set up on the waterfront. Addam squawked a protest as he stepped away, but the ball being returned distracted him again and Jaime just smirked as he had taken to doing lately.

“You’re one to talk,” Brienne said, giving him a full appraisal. He had a Van Morrison t-shirt on, one that she was almost certain he had taken from her house. In fact, she was certain of it, and could remember the three separate times he had ended up wearing one of her father’s old shirts that she herself had inherited as her height outstripped almost everything she could wear so quickly it didn't make sense to buy new clothing. At nearly fifteen, she had finally stopped growing, but Jaime Lannister had started later and was stopping later, even now only a couple of inches shorter than she was, so the clothes fit him perfectly for a day at the beach.

“These are swim trunks,” He protested, gesturing to his plaid patterned shorts, and she raised her eyebrows. “What are you doing out here?”

“It’s a public beach.”

“Not since my father bought all the land at the end,” If Cersei Lannister, with her golden braids and her perfectly crafted make-up, had said those same words to her, she would have been a bit concerned. As it was, she only frowned in agreement with Jaime, who was staring darkly at the Lannister estate at the far end of the beach. It had been an ordinary coastal property when she had met him out here on the beach, but that building had been razed quickly and now, in addition to the seven bedroom monster home, there were two guest houses, three board walks, and the foundations of two removed beach houses that took over the whole end of Crescent Beach that had been bought with Lannister money.

“I’m looking for shells,” She said, and he smirked again, “But you knew that.”

“I may have guessed,” He said innocently. She rolled her eyes, hands behind her back as she started walking again, eyes on the sand. She expected him to go back to his volleyball game, though now it sounded like a lost cost for Addam who was being buried by two boys that Brienne knew only because they were on the Track and Field team, but he started to walk along beside her instead.

“You haven’t been coming out as much,” He said, reaching down and yanking a reed from the dune as they walked past, twirling it through his fingers in a familiar fidget. “I thought maybe you were mad.”

“I’m not mad,” She said, careful to keep her voice even. And she wasn’t mad; there wasn’t any point in being mad. “Even if I was, I wouldn’t be mad at you.”

“I know,” But he didn’t sound like he knew, instead he sounds uncomfortable and like he’s sucking his tongue along his teeth. It’s the same thing he’s done since fourth grade whenever he’s asked to read out loud. It gives him an extra second to think, an extra moment to figure out the words on the page or, on rare occasion, for Brienne to whisper them to him. An extra moment to figure out the right thing to say to his father or a teacher or his father’s friends. “But I was worried you might be.”

“I haven’t been home,” She said, “My father and I went on vacation right after the year let out, and its been raining.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot you can’t come out when it rains.” It had been more than one time that there had been a loud knock on the back door in the middle of a storm and that she or her father had opened the door to find a soaked Jaime Lannister, wondering why Brienne had not followed through on their plans to meet on the beach despite the fact that gale force winds were practically buffeting the house onto its side. He had only done that once since she told him about Galladon, and she wanted to be relieved, but she missed the odd afternoons where their living room felt as though it were filling with steam as he dried out, sitting on a spread of towels on top of the furniture while her father made them grilled cheeses. “Well, I’m glad you came back out.”

“I’m really not mad, Jaime,” She stopped walking, almost sighing, and looked over at him. He had an odd look on his face, facing her but not truly looking at her. “What?”

“I wish you were,” He said, his voice hard as stone. “You ought to be.”

She blinked, not wanting to make the comparison but unable to not avoid it: Thinking of Jaime’s stone-faced father who she could tell kept harsh words thinly veiled when he saw her. Mr. Lannister, from those afternoons in the parlor of their beach estate to the sidelines at various sporting events to the spelling bee that Jaime had been forced to enter and Cersei had won with ease, was not a nice person. The look on Jaime’s face was one she had seen on his father’s face when Jaime wasn’t upset that he won a silver ribbon instead of a blue in the 100 meter, when Jaime had stormed the field with Addam and Brienne and Robb and Sansa when they had come third place in the state track finals. He wanted Brienne to be angry, thought that she should be angrier on her own behalf.

“If I gave two shits about Hyle Hunt and Ronald Connigton…”

He grinned when she cursed, and she hoped it was because that was what he usually did and not because even she could hear the touch of anger in her words. “You’re right,” He said, and rolled his shoulders, tugging the bits off the end of the reed, “Ronald McDonald’s not worth being mad about.”

Brienne laughed, and they started walking again, though she was hardly looking for shells now and instead were mostly ignoring Addam’s yell for Jaime to come back before he had to kick his ass.

“I think we could take them in a fight.”

“Jaime,” She snapped now and he cowered slightly away. She let out a slow breath, knowing it was because he cared. They hadn’t even started high school yet and already things were far too complicated for Brienne’s taste. She wasn’t sure why Hyle and Ron hated her so much, or what she might have done that provoked them, but their determination to ruin her final weeks of 8th grade had been clear.

Ron had kissed her during spin the bottle, after months of hinting that maybe he liked her and maybe they would start dating and share seats on the bus to track meets and go to the movies. Only before during truth or dare when he said she was the ugliest girl he’d ever seen in his life and had grinned at her over the group of people. She had gotten up to leave, tears in her eyes, only turning around when everyone had started yelling behind her. Jaime had punched Ronald Connington so hard in the mouth that one of his teeth had come out and both of them were splashed with blood. Hyle Hunt, his best friend, had leapt onto Jaime who was both stronger and faster.

The whole party had spread out like ripples on a pond, Jaime and Hyle punching and kicking (and maybe even biting) in the middle of the floor while Ron held his face and tried to yell through the blood and split lips. It had been Brienne who stopped them, wrapping an arm around Jaime’s waist and yanking him hard. He had almost swung around at her, but then realized it was her and had even dared to give her a half smile.

She had let him go. Let all of it go and walked out of Ron’s house down the street towards her own house two streets over.

She had heard the door open and slam shut, her name half-yelled, and then someone yell Jaime’s name behind that. Not waiting to see if he came to her, she had ducked under a tree and cut across a back street towards the house where she could no loner see Ron’s house behind her. The next morning, she and her father had left for vacation.

“I don’t want to think about them anymore.’

“But—”

“Ever. Again.”

“Okay.” He finally said, and she half-smiled at his dramatic shoulder sag.

“What have you been doing?”

“Me and Cersei have been helping day with plans for the new aquarium,” He started jabbering and she relaxed a bit, knowing it would keep him busy. “Cersei’s really good at it, she helped design the children’s wing and everything and has been going with dad to all the investor’s meetings while I take care of Tyrion.”

“You’re taking care of Tyrion?”

“Well, I take him to day camp at the library three times a week,” Jaime said, and tossed his reed only to yank a new one out of the ground. “Or I bring him out here with me, but its too hot today. He’d just want to take a nap.”

“Sounds like fun.”

They were both quiet for a while after that, the sun beating down on their heads until Brienne could feel the burn forming on her neck despite her slathering on a thick layer of sunscreen before she came out. The tide was still low, sucking out huge sections of beach towards a clear horizon line. He walked dutifully beside her, eyes fixed on the ground, but she could feel him getting restless, his feet digging into the sand and kicking bits of it into the lingering tide pools, eyes fixed to find her a shell.

“You want to come over later?” He asked suddenly, and she stopped walking. The sun was relentless, and she was due back soon for lunch when her father came home from work for a bit. He grinned at her, his whole face catching the sunshine and almost glittering even though she had to look at him through squinted eyes.

“Okay,” She said, “How about after dinner?”

“Perfect. I’m walking Tyrion home at six,” He said, and spun in a wild circle. “I better get back before Addam kills me.”

He grinned and waved, and she walked back towards the house, wondering why she was blushing all of a sudden, watching him run back towards the water’s edge.


	3. Day 3: Change, October

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, folks! 
> 
> Thanks so much to the folks out there reading, kudosing, and commenting! You all make my day everyday :) 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think!

The sound that had filled the stadium had finally died down and Brienne looked up at the glowing lights overhead with the lightest smile she had had in a long time. Four years of running on the Varsity Track Team and it was finally all over; the last competition before district competition started in early spring. Though fall rarely mattered in the town she lived in, there was a soft breeze in the air and just a snap of cold with the late October air.

She shifted the bouquet she had been given to her other arm, trying not to breathe in the scent of calla lilies too deeply in case she started sneezing. Her father had brought her another bouquet and said he had a surprise waiting at home, but now he had given her space. She had wanted to see the field one more time, washed out in all of the lights. She had wanted to breathe in the late fall air while her muscles ached and her captains pin weighted down one side of her uniform one more time.

Mostly though, she was taking part in a longstanding tradition she and Jaime had begun so long ago she couldn’t remember why. It had been before they had cars at first, and they used to walk through downtown after meets, sweaty and haphazard and laughing about whatever they were thinking about. Sometimes he would buy them ice cream from the food truck that parked near the school to cater to students, sometimes she would pull him into CVS and they’d buy overpriced bottles of lukewarm pop and look at magazines until the middle-aged manager made it a point to stare at them until they paid and left in fit of laughter.

When they got cars, things changed. On meet mornings he’d turn up at her door, top down on his sleek red convertible, Tyrion in the backseat so Jaime could drop him off at the middle school. Or she’d pull up in her blue Volkswagon, pushing all of her work clothes to one side in the backseat, and pick them both up. At night, they’d drive the coastal highway that spread the whole length of town and well beyond it, rotating between seemingly infinite playlists on Jaime’s phone or a thick stack of CDs that Brienne kept in the glovebox of her car. If she drove, he’d roll the window down and stick his arm out, grabbing at leaves and branches and waving to whomever they passed while singing in a horribly off-key voice.

“How do you feel, Brienne?” He would ask her. Brienne’s other friends had taken to calling her various nicknames. What had started as something a cruel mother on another team had yelled had become her official track moniker and thus Brienne “The Beast” Tarth was included when they announced their wins on morning announcements. Sansa and Margaery called her Bri at varying frequencies, and Renly had taken to calling her Blue for reasons she had not entirely figured out yet. But never Jaime. To Jaime, she had always been Brienne or nothing at all.

“I don’t know!” She would yell back, over the wind whipping through the window or over the top of the convertible that mixed with the sound of Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen.

“I feel drunk on sunlight,” He would look at her then, even if he was driving, his teeth perfect and flashing in a broad smile. It had been one of those nights that she had realized how beautiful he really was, a thought that had sent a red blush over her face and a flush over the rest of her.

“And thirsty for moonlight,” It was the response he wanted, she knew, and would get him to whoop and wave his arms straight up in the air before he whipped too fast around curves that thankfully had no one on them.

On those nights, she always dreamed of him. It wasn’t all romantic, she told herself. It wasn’t always even him, at least not in person. It was _him_, though, in every feeling she had. Everything she could feel, smell, or touch in those dreams was him. Sometimes, he was in them, and even thinking that to herself made her blush spottedly. Sansa knew, but only because Brienne had spent a lot of nights at Sansa’s house and knew that at times she shared too much. But the fact that no one had ever brought it up, not even Margaery who steadfast at Sansa’s side meant that her friend had kept her secret.

She was thankful for that, though she did wish that it didn’t have to be a secret at all. There were moments she had felt certain that Jaime would tell her that he dreamed of her too, that he thought of her in the same way that she realized she thought about him. Moments of heavy silence, little pauses before he ended up saying nothing instead. Smiles when she wasn’t looking at him, touches that seemed too much for just friends. Long nights on the beach behind their house, laying on towels and listening to waves and watching the sky turn over them as he pointed out constellations that she knew were wrong and protested when she corrected him.

She thought that maybe tonight that would change. It would be the last of their meets like this: Even Tyrion had mentioned it in the car that morning after Brienne had picked them up.

She let out a little sneeze, moving out of the lights of the field with her flowers. He should have been waiting by the boys locker room under the stands where he had gone to change while she took her last few moments to savor her time on the court. The stands were deserted, the visiting team already gone and all of their own team having shuffled off. She felt a strange lightness in her chest, not what she was expecting at the end of something that had so defined her life for eighteen years.

She made it to the bleachers, closing the gate behind her carefully so that the janitor who would come to close up had one less thing to worry about. She heard soft voices, and wondered if it was Addam, who had, on occasion, joined them after their meets. She could make out Jaime’s voice, but wasn’t sure who the other one was. She stepped into the space between the bleachers, dark through the middle until you reached the other side with the lamps leading to the parking lot.

The voices had stopped, and so had she, watching as two figures were very clearly kissing under the dark cover of the stands. She felt cold was over her, and debatedly wildly what to do as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. They hadn’t seen her, she could still make it back out and leave through the visitor entrance. But as she realized who both figures were, she dropped her flowers with a loud reverb of crinkling plastic.

“Sorry-“ She choked out, bending down to pick them up as Jaime and his sister turned towards her.

“Brienne-“

“She saw us!”

Brienne stood stock still as Cersei cut him off. She had expected something sharp perhaps, but Cersei’s voice was tight with fear. Jaime looked between them, his face twisted. Brienne could hear as he ran his tongue around his teeth, giving himself an extra moment to think.

“Cersei, it’s all right…”

“She. Saw. Us.”

“I heard you the first time!” He said, and Brienne watched as he raised his hands to his face, running them over it. “It’s Brienne,” He said, and took a step towards her, gesticulating wildly. “She’s not going to tell anyone.”

He looked at Brienne, clearly expecting her to agree immediately, but she couldn’t speak. She nodded instead, in agreement with him. Cersei’s eyes narrowed at her, and Brienne swallowed. There was far too much happening for her to think clearly, or to move her feet which now felt every ache they had incurred during the match.

“Cersei, please, go home. It’s Brienne!” He said again, and his sister’s sharp gaze turned to him. “She’s my best friend, Cersei, she won’t say anything.”

“You can’t know that.” Cersei said, an attempt at calm that Brienne could hear the fear through. Wild thoughts ran through her mind now. This was clearly not a one time thing. How long had this been going on? Did other people know? Addam? Tyrion? Tywin Lannister, with his penchant for ignoring anything that didn’t directly benefit him to begin with?

“She’s my best friend!”

“And what am I?”

Brienne realized with a morbid sense of curiosity that she also wanted to know the answer to that question.

“You’re my…my…”

“I’m going to my car.” Cersei ended his attempts to summarize their relationship. “Make up your mind.” She didn’t look again at Brienne, only put a hand on her brother’s arm for a fleeting second before she turned and walked away.

The weight of what had happened settled between them, and Brienne hesitated before she could think. Every word hurt her, like a knife sliding into her skin only at points where she couldn’t see it coming. “I really won’t tell anyone, Jaime.” The promise hurt, not because she wanted to tell others, but because of the way it squeezed at her own heart to think of what it all meant.

“Thanks, Brienne,” He looked up at her. For the second time in her life, though she did not think of the first time in that moment, Brienne thought that Jaime Lannister must have been the saddest person in the whole wide world. “I—I need to go with her.”

And he turned, before Brienne could speak a word, could think of the ride they were supposed to take and the feeling of being drunk on him and drunk on sunlight in the front seat of her car, he had turned away and left her standing there, flowers still in her hand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! 
> 
> Thanks for all the folk reading and kudosing and commenting! You all make my day every time! :D 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think!

Being thirty and standing behind the house she had grown up in was an interesting experience. She had, perhaps unknowingly, avoided this place as much as possible since she had left the first time a dozen years ago. There had been holidays of course, but those were spent in usually within the confines of the house, or at least not any farther than the boardwalk. Those visits, from her brief trips home from college to the week she had lived there until leaving again a week later for her PhD program. Her father, perhaps sensing that she would not come home except on occasions she felt inexplicably obligated, had taken to spending his own vacation days coming to see her. And then, when he retired, had taken to traveling with her in short bursts, the pair of them renting temporary houses in cities and landscapes across the country as they ticked boxes off of their travel maps. 

To be back on the beach, her beach, sand between her toes, while her father had watched carefully through the back window at the gathering storm clouds brought back a slew of odd sensations. She did not look down the beach to where she knew the ever-expanding Lannister estate would have crawled, crimson and gold, over more of the dunes that hadn’t washed away with the mild erosion. She instead looked to the water, letting memories of warmer days- days not in mid December- wash over her.

She started to walk, letting the breeze blow her newly lengthening hair around her shoulders. For years she had brushed it back and kept it short, ignoring it as something she was obligated to deal with rather than something she was interested in keeping. It had been when she started dating Tormund that she let it start to grow, and had decided that she liked it so much that she kept it until it curled at her shoulders.

To her knowledge, Tormund had never commented on her hair other than the obligatory comments. But Tormund was Tormund in that he lived rather loudly and fully as himself and thought others ought to do the same. Brienne had always considered herself a private person and, if she could manage with her size and other qualities, had preferred that people not notice her. But over the course of the three years they had dated, she had come to realize that she did not mind being seen as long as at least one set of those eyes were kind or caring. That it did not matter if she laughed too loud at the bar and caught sideways glances if Tormund or Sansa or Margaery or Renly was there laughing with her. She had realized, when Tormund mentioned that he might want to get married after they graduated from university, that what she felt with him, while perhaps not love, had been her first real feeling of freedom. The realization had almost made her sick, when she denied his proposal, and broke off their relationship. She had felt, for a long time, that she had used him unknowingly.

Two years after, Sansa mentioned that Tormund was dating her brother Jon, and that feeling had finally settled at the thought of him being happy.

She had never brought Tormund here, back to her hometown, though she supposed that the opportunities to do so while they were in school had been plenty. She hadn’t brought Sandor either, in their six month whirlwind of a relationship until she and Sansa and Sandor had realized all at once it seemed that Sansa and Sandor would be far happier together and the pair of them were far better as friends. There had been other men between and beyond those two, but none that she would have ever even considered allowing into this part of her life. They were bar faces, intrigued by her confidence and odd looks and ability to suck down shots of whiskey with no chaser as easy as they sipped expensive beers. There had not been one that truly captivated her.

December on the beach was an interesting feel. People assumed that it would be too cold to be out, and though it might have been too cold to be in the water, it was perhaps a perfect day to be in the sand. The tide rose and swelled slowly, pulsing close to her feet as it retreated from the edge of the dune, leaving a thick line of foam and a smattering of shells. She thought consciously, for the first time in years, of collecting them. She realized, seeing over half buried in the sand, that she still kept them in the windows. That the small handfuls of them her father would bring with him had been part of her decorations in every dorm, apartment, and now a small house, keeping the windowsill bright with a thin sheen of pearl-tinted rainbows. She decided that she would need to take one home now.

She worked her way to the edge of the dunes, hands clasped behind her back, not paying an incredible amount of attention.

She looked up only at the sound of loud screeches towards the end of the beach. Children’s screeches, thankfully followed by laughter that made her jerk her head upwards. A massive man, with thick curls of black hair, had a little boy scooped into his arms, swinging him through the air. Two other children, presumably older (one of whom had their arms crossed in an indignant huff) were watching.

Brienne stopped walking, waiting for the inevitable that soon followed. She should have realized with the proximity to the holiday that the entirety of the Lannister family would be home for the holidays. She felt her throat tighten, the chill in the air starting to feel far colder along her spine than it had. Her last night out here flashed forward in her mind.

She had been expecting to find him there, sitting in the dunes with his easy smile and maybe wearing one of her inherited shirts. Instead, it had been _her_, waiting because she knew that Brienne would come. What had she said? The words had faded to the years it had been, to conversations that perhaps should have meant more, but the themes were the same.

_You love him._

Not an accusation.

_He would never leave me for you._

Simply a fact.

_We’re meant to be together. We were born together, we’re going to live that way. _

An odd oversight not to mention the sensation of dying when the tears burning on Brienne’s face seemed to threaten to drown her.

_I don’t hate you. I understand why you love him. I love him, too._

That burned. Worse than anything. How could anyone love him like she did? And yet, here they were.

_If you care about him, you’ll stay away. We’ll graduate soon, and you’ll never see him again. I’ll make sure of that. _

She had not come back since, and though she had seen him once at the end of her boardwalk, as if debating coming up to her home as he had done so often. But she had not returned his wave, and his face had fallen, his legs swayed under him and, only after she had turned her back to his figure through the window, had he gone back and away. When school started back that spring, he no longer came to track practice. There had been one morning that he had driven by her house, as if he were doing to pick her up again, Tyrion in the backseat, but even as he had slowed, it whipped around the corner again as she considered going out to it.

Cersei seemed to be placating her oldest son, wrapping her hand around his shoulder which he promptly shrugged off as the blonde boy in her husband’s arms waved his arms madly with a screeching giggle. Her husband was Robert Baratheon, Renly’s older brother by more than a decade, a loud, boisterous, wealthy alcoholic who had a penchant for infidelity. Renly had offered, in what she knew as a wayward attempt to reunite her with Jaime, to take her as his date instead of Loras, but she had refused; he had told her later that Jaime had not been there.

She turned to go back to her home, her thought of picking up a shell forgotten as old hurts reared their heads too strongly, and another loud, unclear screech raised from the children. She shouldn’t have come out; some ghosts should stay in the past where they belonged. She held that thought, blinking into the early afternoon sun that was already starting to go down with the lateness of the year. She let the waves fill her with a different sort of peace, one that ebbed and flowed with the water.

“Did you find one?”

The voice tore right through her skin and into her spine, and she was breathless as she whipped around. He stood there, sunlight glittering on his skin. The twelve years that had passed between since the last time she saw him showed on his face in the soft lines by his eyes and the beginning of gray hairs around his temples. But he was striking: Black jeans with one hand stuffed inside a pocket while the other was closed delicately around something, and T-shirt of a band called The Strokes.

“Here,” He said, and she heard the waver in his voice as he moved his hand, revealing a perfect shell pinched between them. It was a muscle shell, just a touch of sand still stuck in the ridges, and a perfect sheen that showed off the charcoal black color in the sun. Feeling suddenly as if she weren’t real, she reached out a hand and took it.

“Thank you,” She said finally, the first words she had spoken to him in so long they felt as though they were weighted on the end of chains as they came from her mouth.

He looked as though he wanted to say more, and she realized that she had a thousand questions of her own that had never been answered, but his opening mouth was interrupted by an excited squeal, “You’re too fast, Uncle Jaime!”

The middle child, a beautiful blonde girl, had come running full speed at him, her small feet hardly able to keep up. Brienne realized with a spotty blush like she had felt in years, that he had run to catch up to her. She watched as he picked her up in a big twirl, the little girl laughing wildly until he put her back down.

“Myrcella!” The yell came up the beach, and the little girl only gave Brienne one more interested glance and a tiny wave until she was running back towards her mother who was giving her a look surely sharp enough to cut glass.

“Sorry about that, Cersei’s a bit particular with them,” He said, and Brienne, even after years of not hearing it, could hear the strain in his voice. Hurt, overlayed with his beautiful smile and his casual demeanor. She looked back down the beach where Robert had finally put the youngest one down and was instead trying to get the older of the two boys to toss what appeared to be a frisbee until the little girl ran and clung to his back with a joyous whoop.

They looked remarkably like cherubs, though they had the same thin build as Cersei. She found herself thinking of Renly, who resembled his brother so much that if Robert had maintained the thin figure and longer hair of his youth, they might have been twins. Bright blue eyes, straight black hair. And the little girls’ eyes, Myrcella’s, they had been green when they looked to Brienne.

She looked back up to Jaime, and saw in his eyes that he knew that she now knew another secret. If the situation had not been so present to her, she might have laughed at the absurdity of it. She had not seen him in more than ten years, had not spoken to him in even longer than that, and still she shared his secrets.

“It’s alright,” She said, and was surprised at how even her voice sounded.

“Brienne, I—”

“It’s alright, Jaime,” She said gently, and his shoulders sagged.

“No,” He shook his head, “It wasn’t.” He half-turned away from her, looking out over the water, “And it isn’t now.”

This was the conversation she wanted to have. Not the conversation she needed in that moment. Her heart felt full to bursting, tears pressing at her eyes until she closed them and forced herself to breathe calmly.

“I shouldn’t have left you that night,” He said, and looked at her, “I should have—”

“Jaime.”

He turned to her, and in an almost comical mirroring of what she had done when they were children, she pulled him into an embrace. It would not heal them, and whatever scars they had, but his arms came tight around her, holding her close and she was reminded of so many things she had thought best forgotten.

How long they stood like that, she wasn’t sure. Too long. Not near long enough when he pulled back, the quiet disrupted by the sound of his children playing loudly with the man they thought was their father.

“We should talk, Brienne,” He said. “Could you do dinner tomorrow?”

“Tommorow’s Christmas Eve, Jaime.” He laughed at his own mistake then.

“The day after Christmas, then,” He said, “I’ll pick you up.”

And he was gone again, turned with a wave, meeting the smallest boy mid-run and swinging him up on his shoulders.


	5. Chapter 5: The Long Night, Together in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, folks! 
> 
> Thank you all for the very sweet reviews! Hopefully this chapter is a little less melancholy :) 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think!

It was strange, she realized, to stay in a hotel in your own town. She had felt a tourist there for years now, but even as she seemed a stranger to the streets, there had always been her home at the end of one of them, a place that was as familiar to her as she was to it. A room that had never truly been updated since she was a teenager, scattered with trophies and posters and that held treasures such as her first portable CD player and a stack of VHS home video tapes that they didn’t even have a way to watch. When she woke here, she expected to see the pale blue walls of her bedroom and to hear the waves that beat a relentless sound against the back boardwalk.

Instead, she was looking at a wall the color of unwhipped cream and could hear sound of a nearby road construction crew that had been working for years to re-pave the bypass that held most of the commercial growth. That growth that included this hotel, which was close enough to public beach access that it occasionally filled on holiday weekends, but far enough away that it wasn’t too expensive. It was clean, and the slight hint of salt that hung in the air over their town was overshadowed by the scent of generic-brand carpet cleaner.

She blinked, her brain not comprehending why she was here at first. Taking in the splash of color that the tabletop Christmas tree brought to this hotel room before she realized several things all at once. First, she had to use the restroom. Second, this room was far colder than what she usually slept in, which she could tell from the cold snap against her cheeks and the tip of her nose, but she was wrapped in a cocoon of blanket and heat that kept the rest of her warm, despite the fact that she could both see in the mess on the floor and feel in the tingling of her skin that she wasn’t wearing clothes.

She shifted carefully, knowing it was truly far too early to be awake, barely early enough for the construction crew. The light coming through the heavy hotel curtains was barely enough to light the room, and though she didn’t check the numbers on the thin, electric red letters, she didn’t need to. She moved a bit more, and part of the warmth that had wrapped around her moved back.

If he had been touching her, it had been only just. The slightest touch of his fingertips on the skin above her hip that slid down to the space she had been sleeping in as she climbed from the bed. She moved towards the bathroom, wishing she had her bathrobe. She took moments to herself to look in the mirror as she finished, rinsing out her mouth with cold water and wiping a touch of something smudged on her left cheek.

As she returned to the room, she stopped at her purse, swallowing a Motrin with a glass filled with the remains of the melted ice in the half-covered bucket. She smiled as she did it, strangely, deliriously happy, but that didn’t help the soreness that was settled in her lower back. A familiar soreness, one that was echoed in the tension in other muscles that were protesting their recent use. She half dressed, her underwear, and his shirt, and climbed back into bed, facing him.

His face was half-obscured by the pillow and she took a moment to reach her own fingers out to stroke his jawline, a touch that almost woke him but didn’t. Instead he turned onto his back, his chest exposed. She let a soft smile touch her lips, moving where they could entangle their legs only slightly, letting sleep wash over her again.

He doesn’t drive a red convertible anymore. He hadn’t driven one two years ago when he came to pick her up for dinner the day after Christmas; his car then had been black with windows so tinted she hadn’t been sure it was him until he climbed out to knock on the door.

His car was red again, recently cleaned though the salt caked around the wheel wells showed there was little point to the four car washes in this town. Old music, at the moment a Bob Seger song she hadn’t heard since the last time she had needed to, played from his phone and through the speakers. That morning, when they had both finally awoken and were twisted in laughter and bare skin and hotel sheets, they had talked softly. Now, almost thankfully, the world seemed lighter.

When she had left their dinner two years ago, she had thought that would be the last time she saw him. That she couldn’t stand to see his sad eyes or listen to him as he spoke of the children he had but did not truly know, of the ups and downs and in and outs of the tangled web he had sunk further and further into with his sister and her life. He had apologized to her then, deep, rumbling apologies that had pushed feebly against the twelve years of life they had both lived since then. And he had kissed her, perhaps offering that they do this then, that he leave all of everything else behind in that moment and leave with her.

But she had not gone with him. She had kissed him, but then ridden home in her own car. She had not gone back to the beach the next day. She had left for her home far away from there even as her father asked her to stay for New Years. She had not expected to see him after that, and finally, she thought, she had been content to leave him in that window of her past.

And for months, she hadn’t seen him. She had continued to her life with her friends and with work and with the casual with bar dates and men that Sansa thought she might find interesting. He was no longer something she did not want to think about, simply a part of her life with its own, peculiar box that showed itself only in moments when her thoughts were unbidden or when she thought of something she had not remembered for a long time.

And then he had had appeared again. On the doorstep of the small house that she was making regular payments on, soaked with the heavy rain that had been pouring outside. And he had told her, shaking and breaking along fault lines that she had seen first when they were only small children, that Robert was dead. Cersei was gone. Joffrey, the oldest boy she had seen on the beach, was gone. His father was dead, too, an unrelated fact that Brienne knew in the back of her mind that her father had certainly sent flowers from both of them but had not told her that it had happened. Tyrion had the other children, at the beach house where Cersei had been staying with them as she and Robert muddled through a nasty divorce.

It was her, he told her softly. Cersei and Joffrey who had decided it, and some man she was seeing that had helped them pull it off. It had been easy enough for him to see; Jaime was perhaps the only person who knew her, and she had refused to listen as he tried to talk her out of it. She stood to lose everything: The money, their father’s support, the house, her built career because Robert owned everything, and with her so far away from him, they would never connect what happened to her.

Until he told. Not fast enough to save Robert. Jaime told her, with a peculiar wave of tears that soaked through the towel she had given him, that Robert had died anyway. Jaime had thought, until the last, that she might be different. That whatever self-determined impulse had seized her might diminish, but he had been wrong that whole time. He had gone to the police, and she had dissapeared.

Brienne had not known what to do that night. It was the second night in her life that she had the overwhelming feeling of crippling uncertainty. He had driven nearly four hours to her home, four hours from any of his other family or source of comfort except her, in an unfamiliar place. And she had not known what to do beyond listen.

She had offered him clothes, an old T-Shirt because it had felt wrong not to, and had set him up in the guest room she kept clean of clutter for her father. She had half-expected, when she woke, that he would be gone. But instead, he was sitting on her couch again, waiting on her before he began his drive home. He had left her with his telephone number, having gotten her new one before he left. In the months that followed, she came to expect his calls at regular intervals. A few minutes at first, a rudimentary update on the situation. And then more. Longer calls that say that Tommen had joined the track team and Myrcella had a poem published in a children's literary magazine and that Tyrion had moved in permanently to one of the guest houses on the property with his longtime girlfriend. An invitation to a concert that she genuinely couldn’t make, and another that had spiked her anxiety to the point that she had to decline.

And then finally, a sympathy call she had answered on her way home, to offer his condolences at the passing of her father.

That had been a week ago, and the time between had been absorbed with organizing the funeral. Sansa had come, and stayed with one of her brothers – Brienne never could remember if it was Bran or Rickon who still lived in the Stark’s old house- and was a godsend as Brienne worked to organize everything quickly. It had been simple enough. Choose a funeral home. Get a casket. Order food for the after reception. Write the obituary. Make a hundred copies of the death certificate and cancel the cable, the cell phone, all the credit cards. Call the lawyers and get the wills. Inherit money and the house and the car and other things that she did not need and was not sure what to do with but had the rest of her lifetime to figure that out.

And that last night, when everything was finally over and there had been nothing else to do, she had walked out to her car after the reception. And there he had been, waiting for her by his car, offering her a chance for the reconnection she now knew that she wanted.

“How do I feel, Brienne?” His voice came to her as if he were very far away, even though he was less than two feet away in the driver's seat of his car, breaking through what had been two years of thoughts that had been tempered by grief and joy. She ran a hand over her forehead, pushing her hair back. It was still to her shoulders, something he had seemed to find rather captivating at different points in the evening.

“I don’t know,” She said, looking over at him where she knew he would be looking at her. He whipped hard around a curve and she noticed, in the sun, the touch of gray in his dark colored beard. He looked happy, happier than she had seen him since the last time they had driven like this.

“I’m drunk on sunlight!” He said, too loud for the closed car. He knew it too, and she jerked back as he pushed the buttons to roll the windows down. The wind whipped around them, and Brienne smiled. She held up a hand, letting the wind flow around her fingers.

“And thirsty for moonlight?” She asked, a laugh bubbling to her lips.

He whooped, speeding them along the coastal highway to where her car was still parked, one hand on the wheel and one reaching out of the driver’s side window towards something she wasn’t sure about.


	6. Final Chapter: Winter's End, Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, final day for this story! I had so much writing and participating in this! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and sticking with it. Sorry this chapter is a day late. There was going to be a seperate epilogue, but I combined some things. 
> 
> I will be responding to comments, I just didn't have time to do both in a way that was meaningful! Thank you so much to the folks that have commented, that's really what's kept me writing and engaged! 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think!

She wasn’t sure why it was that she had expected this to truly work. Part of it felt like the kind of wish fulfillment that she would have been far better off leaving to made for television movies and books for people who still believed in overly romantic notions. Perhaps it had worked, at least for those first six months. The first two when he had come to her house whenever it was that Tyrion could stay with Tommen and Myrcella for the weekend, these past four when she had asked for a job transfer and he had worked with her to repaint and reupholster and clean her father’s house—her house now. It had worked in the those nights they could walk with their hands intertwined on the beach and the mornings that he would climb out of bed early only to call her an hour and half later to east breakfast with all of them at his house down the beach.

But what about now? It would be a lie to say they hadn’t fought before. The demons that Jaime Lannister had were stacked as thick as her own, and he had made a joke (after a night of one too many glasses of overly sweet red wine) that if they layered all of their issues together, it would make a good tiramisu. There were days that were a constant battle between arrogance and uncertainty, between insecurity and healing. She didn’t mind those battles. Winning battles meant eventually winning wars, and she had not been entirely convinced that this wasn’t a war.

And then tonight had happened, and she was standing in his kitchen with half of an old fashioned on the table in front of her, the ice cubs reduced to nearly nothing, and he had stormed off to somewhere else in his house that felt so large Brienne felt as though it might swallow her. It had been a seemingly normal evening; Tyrion and Tysha had taken Tommen and Myrcella to the movies, leaving Jaime and Brienne to an evening by themselves. One that had consisted of dinner and Jaime’s atrocious singing, a long discussion about Brienne’s latest work project in the Adirondack on the back deck, the early summer waters glittering in the moonlight and the humidity that would have been insufferable if not for the breeze that rolled towards them in time with the waves.

And then he had mixed them drinks, or at least attempted to follow how Tyrion usually did them. There was nothing wrong with them, per say, though even he had laughed and said that his brother’s were clearly superior. Only halfway through her own drink, Brienne had pulled him close on the couch, her mouth still burning from the bourbon. But when she had suggested they go to his room before someone walked in on them, he had recoiled as if she had hit him. It was not something they had done, for the sake of Tommen and Myrcella, but they hadn’t been home.

His face, overshadowed with something she did not understand, had dredged up horrible things she didn’t want to remember. Cruelties, both intentional and not, that she had seen in other people’s faces as they looked at her. In only a few seconds it seemed, they had devolved into yelling at each other; in only a few minutes, he had disappeared up the main staircase.

Her thoughts went to wild places while she stood stock still, watching the expensive bourbon melt her ice and thin the dark color of her drink to something only slightly translucent. Her house hadn’t sold yet, she could move back. Could she stand to sell her father’s home? Would they allow her to transfer to her old job? Has she put the lid back on the paint cans on the back deck? Did she need to buy more aluminum foil at Publix before the work picnic next Tuesday? Everything was spinning, spinning and spiraling until nothing made sense –

“Brienne,” His voice cut through her mind, and he had reappeared on the staircase. She waited on him to suggest that she leave, to say that he would call or come by and then not do it. To tell her all of this was a mistake and he had known better since he had chosen to stay with Cersei all those years ago.

“Would you come up here for just a minute?” His spoke as though he were struggling to do so, and she watched his tongue move over his teeth under his lips, buying himself that extra second. “I have something I need you to see.”

She walked to him, her eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t reach out a hand for her to take, as he so often did when they were making their way up her own creaking staircase towards her bedroom, but she was grateful. The air felt charged, but not with the kind of tension that would do anything beneficial. The doors on the second floor all the looked the same (to the point that in her many visits, it had been difficult to differentiate the bathroom from any of the bedrooms), and he walked them towards the one at the end of the hall.

She watched him suck in a long breath, as if steeling himself for something vast, before he pushed open the door. The room was large, a bit messy. It looked almost like how she expected it too, with a portable record player and haphazard stack of records in one corner, a desk that was stacked with what she assumed were work files in another. His bed was large, but looked hardly slept in- though she supposed that made sense with most of his nights spent at her home. There were a few boxes against the wall, labeled “Awards”, “Paperwork”, and other things she couldn’t make out, and a houseplant near the curved window that seemed in desperate need of some of the water in the half-drunk bottles on his nightstand.

“It’s nice,” She said.

“No it isn’t,” He shook his head, “It’s the room that I wanted you to see.”

He walked over to the window and she followed, folding her hands behind her back. There were some loose bits of paper, a couple of quarters, and what seemed to be a credit card there. She looked out of the window, thinking perhaps there was something outside, but it was the same view they had always had hovering over the dunes as they did.

“Here,” He said, and pointed to the far corner of his window, almost covered by the curtains. She moved them back, and stared, unbelieving for a long moment at the light purple seashell that was there.

“Do you remember the starfish?” He asked, and she looked over at him, feeling tears come up to her eyes.

“You kept it.”

“Yes,” He said, and smiled down at it. “I couldn’t get rid of it. It was…you were…you still are…”

“Jaime-“

“You were the only person, Brienne,” He said, and now he was looking at her and his eyes were green fires. Not dangerous, not wild. Warm, comforting, soft. “The only person who was kind to me, always. The only one who never judged me. Even when I thought you hated me…I couldn’t rid it.”

“I never hated you,” She said softly.

“Cersei told me what she said to you,” He reached out a hand for one of hers, “Only years later of course, when she thought that it wouldn’t matter to me anymore. She didn’t realize…”

He had stopped talking, and Brienne was unsure if she wanted to know the rest of that thought. If he said that he had loved her all that time, she wasn’t sure she could believe him. It would wrap up this story far too neatly, and there were too many pieces for it to do that.

“Do you remember the starfish?”

Did she? She remembered him most of all, and there somewhere was a hazy image of him crying and of his gentle fingers dropping the starfish back to the surf so that it wouldn’t die there on the dunes. She remembered that feeling, and hugging him afterwards and how he started walking to her house to get away from his own and because he liked being around her.

“I asked you, when I put it back in the water, if it made a difference,” She felt her breath tighten, recognizing what he had meant by that question. Perhaps not consciously, perhaps not now with everything that had changed and all the walls they were chipping away together. “And you told me…you told me that it made a difference to that one. That I had saved it and that it did matter, even if it didn’t feel that way.”

She felt something shift in the room between them, flooded with warmth.

“And I told you that I thought you were the nicest person in the whole world,” He said, his voice barely audible, “I wasn’t wrong then. And I’m not wrong now.”

“Wrong about what?” She asked, more than overwhelmed and more than confused, but desperate to know. To know why his face was tightened with nervousness and she could feel the bits of sweat escaping from his palm.

He gestured to the shell again, and narrowed her eyes. With her free hand she reached for it, lifting it as gently as he had nearly twenty-five years ago. She held it in her hand for a long moment, looking it over to see if anything had changed, not understanding until something else glittered in the light coming in through his window. Setting the shell down, she reached for it, the weight of it insurmountably light in her palm.

“Will you marry me, Brienne?” She squeezed his hand in her own and the warmth that flowed between them burned like an electric chain.

“Mama!” She looked up from the small shell bed where she was standing, hearing both the scream and the loud thumps of Arthur’s bare feet hitting the sand as he ran towards her as fast as his swim diaper would allow him too. Jaime trailed behind, his eyes covered by sunglasses, but the lines beside them betraying his amusement. Clasped in one of his tiny hands was a tiny white nautilus that he waved at her. “Sh sh sh sh!” He said insistently, not quite able to get the word all the way out.

She crouched down, looking at his shell with rapt attention. “It’s beautiful, Arthur.”

“Show Tomtom and Cell?” He asked, and squealed out a giggle as Jaime scooped him up from behind, swinging him in his arms before catching him again.

“Why don’t we go show Uncle Tyrion and let Tommen and Myrcella finish their volleyball game?” Arthur laughed, reaching for Jaime’s sunglasses to pull them off. He did not like not being able to see either of their eyes, and would pull anything from blankets to glasses off to make sure there was no obstruction. At only a bit over a year old, he already had a fierce determination and a joyful spirit that Brienne swore was all that got them through the complications of life somedays.

“Here,” She said, and Jaime handed him over carefully, keeping his glasses on his head with a quick press to the center of them. “Your daddy is a mess, isn’t he Arthur?”

“Mess!” Arthur agreed, moving losing interest in Jaime’s glasses as he rediscovered the shell he was holding.

“Hey!’ Jaime said indignantly, but reached out for Brienne’s free hand all the same and they walked towards the water’s edge where Tyrion and Tysha were stretched out in chairs. Brienne might have thought that they were asleep if Tyrion hadn’t reached for his glass of Sangria that was next to him in the sand.

She set Arthur down as he started squirming, and stood back with Jaime as he ran to his uncle, dropping his shell (and a bit of wet sand) onto his unsuspecting uncle’s stomach. Tyrion scooped him up easily, however, sitting up in his chair so that Arthur could chatter to him about it in the mix of English and baby talk that he spoke quite fluently.

Arthur’s hair was almost the same color as Tyrion’s, lighter than broth Brienne’s or Jaime’s, though just a few shades on Brienne. It the curled in the same way that Jaime’s did in all of his childhood pictures and his eyes were Brienne’s bright blue, his ears the same (slightly sticking out at the top) as her father’s had been.

  
“Are you guys still gonna play?” Tommen’s voice floated up the beach, and Jaime looked to her. They had promised, when spring came, that they would play Tommen and Myrcella in a game of volleyball, the first spring game where Brienne wouldn’t be pregnant or the pair of them wouldn’t have a crawling baby to keep out of the water.

“Are you okay with watching him, Tyrion?”

“I am learning a good deal about shells,” Tyrion said, with a smile and a wink as the brief interruption only seemed to re-energize Arthur, who had handed Tyrion the shell only to take it back only to put it in his hand again.

“Are you ready?” She asked Jaime, and he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back just under her wedding band.

“We’ve got a combined foot and a half on them, Brienne.”

“We might be in trouble if they do anything other than spike the ball,” She said, and the moment held for only a moment before they arrived at the net, both Tommen and Myrcella eyeing them suspiciously as they moved to opposite ends of the volleyball net, the warm breezes of spring catching on the breezes all around them.


End file.
